


A Mistake

by thedevilchicken



Category: Original Work
Genre: Clones, Enemies to Lovers, M/M, Saving the World, Superheroes, Supervillains, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2018-08-26
Packaged: 2019-07-02 13:59:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15797973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: Superhero Hercules and his supervillain nemesis, Chorus, make a pact to save the world. What they have to do has an unexpected side effect.





	A Mistake

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Prinzenhasserin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prinzenhasserin/gifts).



Chorus is trying to kill him. It's not exactly the first time that's happened, but the difference is that this time, for once, he doesn't mean that literally. 

There are so many of him. There used to be a limit to the copies of himself that he could make - he could manage ten to twelve if they only required a set of basic functions, five or six if the aim was performing complex tasks, and just one if the replication had to be absolutely perfect. Now he's tapping into Hercules's power and not just what's found in an average human body like his own, those limits no longer have much meaning: when he walked into Chorus's lair tonight, there were forty copies waiting for him. There were forty of them, each one virtually indistinguishable, where usually the higher the number the easier they are to spot. 

Of course, Hercules has an advantage now. The members of Chorus's chorus all appear relatively independent but they're still centrally controlled, and since the day they saved the world and experienced the unexpected side effects that came with that, all he has to do is listen. The real Chorus is the one whose thoughts are there inside his head. Now, he'll always know exactly which of them he is, as he knows now. If the whole world were filled with them, he'd still know where to find him. 

He knows where Chorus is, but the only slight problem with that is he can't currently reach him. Forty perfect copies stood in his way when he arrived there at Chorus's base not long ago, their number draining off a high proportion of Hercules's usual power, and now two of them have him pinned to the wall by a bank of humming servers. He could pull back his power if he wanted to and pop each copy back out of existence or back into Chorus's mind or wherever they actually emanate from, but he doesn't want to do that. After all, he's not there to work. This is purely a social call, and with so many copies of Chorus there, with so many pairs of eyes on him, watching and anticipating, it feels _very_ social. 

Hercules doesn't wear a costume, not like the other heroes do. They seem strangely preoccupied with their image, all capes and leather or kevlar weaves, whereas the only concession he makes is to tie his curls back from his shoulders so they don't flap in his face when he's airborne and maybe zipping up his jacket if he's actually bothered to wear one. His t-shirt tends to ride up from where he tucks it into his beaten-up old jeans, like it has now, and one of one of the copies' hands takes advantage of that, its fingers skimming the skin just above his belt buckle. He might be superhuman, he might be the strongest man on Earth, but that touch still makes him shiver. It feels real, like it's Chorus himself who's touching him.

Chorus was, until quite recently, what people like to call a supervillain; he was also, until quite recently, what they liked to call Hercules's nemesis. They've never used that word themselves but the fact of it is they've been at odds for twenty years now and so he understands where people picked the idea up from. It was never personal for him, though, no more than it had been with any of the others who've come and gone over the years - the attempts on his life were about their work and not about the two of them as people - and so _nemesis_ had always seemed somewhat excessive. These days, though, it's personal. The second copy catches the hem of his shirt and drags it up till its lodged beneath his arms. The first copy unbuckles his belt, unbuttons his jeans, and pushes them down. He rests his head against the wall. He's already hard. It doesn't get much more personal than this. 

When scientists discovered the asteroid that was heading for Earth, at first they hoped it would miss like others had before. When it became clear that it wouldn't, and was on course to collide, all they managed to do was to fragment it; many of those fragments would burn up in the atmosphere, but the truth was several of them would still be the size of aircraft carriers and football pitches - perhaps Earth might survive it, with a little luck and the right angles, but the loss of life would be immense. That was when they called in the heroes, and while the others argued about what to do with scientists and governments, Hercules left and went to find the cleverest man he knew. 

He told Chorus everything. And when he was done, Chorus took a steady breath and said, "I might have an idea." 

The first copy wraps its hand around his cock, its skin warm almost like it's a man in its own right and not something conjured out of Chorus's modified mind. He did it to himself, because he didn't trust anyone else to do it for him - there's a video of the surgery online and Hercules has watched it more than once though it makes him wince. He could see the exact moment that the implant - which was meant to increase his brain's already naturally high processing capacity tenfold - came online, and he began to split and duplicate. It's unnerving to know he's seen the moment that Avery Jones became Chorus. It's more unnerving to know that others have tried to replicate his error. No one ever tries to make what he'd intended to do work instead, and the sad truth is that nobody survives. Chorus is unique in his abilities. He's like Hercules that way.

"I was going to use it to take your powers," Chorus told him, gesturing at the equipment he'd just unveiled like Hercules had any idea what any of it did, though the general sentiment didn't come as a surprise. "Technically, it should also work for this." 

"Will you be able to reverse it when we're done?"

"You mean if an apocalyptic meteor shower doesn't kill us first?" Chorus shrugged expansively. "No, I really don't think so. Do we have a choice?" 

"That depends on how much you trust the others," he replied, and even before he could hear Chorus's thoughts inside his head, he knew exactly how much he didn't trust the other heroes. He didn't wait for a response, he just stretched out on the bench and watched as Chorus did the same. A copy put the wires in place and flicked the switch. A twitching, screaming, agonising forty minutes later, the connection was made and they were ready to start. Before, Chorus's copies were only as strong as a normal human being, and Hercules couldn't be in two places at once; after, Chorus copied him. He could be in _five_ places.

Five of him left Kent and headed up into the atmosphere - he knew something was wrong, more than they'd expected, but there was no time left to lose. By the end of the day, everyone was saved. And when he merged and returned to Chorus's base, at the top of his company's London tower, he could hear every thought he had like he'd spoken it out loud. 

"The process seems to have had an unexpected side effect," Chorus said, but that wasn't even close to the thought in his head as he looked at him. It had never been personal for Hercules because their rivalry was about their work - he worked for the British government every now and then, like a strange kind of superpowered civil servant, and sometimes Chorus worked against him. He was technically the CEO of a rather successful tech company, a genius self-made millionaire, but his philosophy has never really sat well with Hercules - he wants world peace, just at the expense of everyone's free will. But Chorus wasn't thinking about their rivalry. He was thinking about _him_.

"If I didn't know better, I'd say you were worried about me," Hercules said, but honestly he didn't know better, he just _knew_. Chorus was relieved that he'd lived through hurling meteors back into space, as if he hadn't done a number of stranger things in the time they'd been acquainted. Chorus was flooded with relief. Chorus was flooded with desire. He wasn't entirely sure how he'd missed it before, once it stared him in the face. So he strode across the room and kissed him. It seemed like the thing to do, under the circumstances. He could hear it in his head that Chorus agreed, but the hands in his hair and the mouth against his told him all he needed to know. 

It's been six months since then. Now, one of the copies of Chorus pulls the tie from his hair and lets it down around his shoulders in its usual long, messy waves so that he can take two handfuls of it and ease back his head, baring his throat. They called him Hercules when he resurfaced in the sixties but he doesn't know what his name really is - he doesn't remember very much of anything before Rome, and the Romans called him _Felix_ , but he knows that's not his name. All he knows aside from that is that he's not a Greek demigod, so his name isn't _Hercules_. At least he's probably not, if only because there's not too many reports of Greek demigods possessing the power of flight. But he looks like one, or so Chorus thinks - he's tall and tanned and olive-skinned, dark-haired, green-eyed, and dense with muscle. Chorus likes that about him. He can hear it in his head. 

A copy strokes him. A copy grazes his throat with its teeth. They pin his hands to the wall above his head and all the other copies watch them do it. They sit around the room, a sub-basement under a sub-basement underneath the company's London base, on chairs and leaning against walls, cross-legged on the floor, on workbenches and tabletops, forty copies of Avery Jones all watching him. He's forty-three years old now, twenty years since they first met - Hercules has always looked not even thirty, but there's a bit of grey in Avery's short dark hair, a few wrinkles by his sharp dark eyes, but he's lean and charming and attractive. But, as one copy rubs the tip of his cock with the pad of its thumb, as the other copy scrapes its teeth against his stubbed jaw, Hercules has had enough of the game. 

He could fuck the forty copies one by one, and take all day and night about it, but enough's enough. All it takes is a moment's concentration and he pulls back all his power and, one by one, the copies vanish in the air, till only one man's left. That man looks at him as he leans there against the wall, his shirt tucked up, his jeans pushed down, his cock flushed and hard in front of him. Chorus comes toward him across the room and he doesn't rearrange himself and he doesn't move away. Chorus leans up to kiss his mouth, roughly, thoroughly, and he can hear what he wants, and he wants it, too, one then the other in an endless feedback loop. One day what happened to them might feel less overwhelming, but that day is not today. Now what it is is something new, that he's never had before. He remembers two thousand years or more. _New_ means more to him than anyone.

He turns away to face the wall. He rests his forehead down against it, rests his hands against it; he could push the whole thing down if he wanted to, tear the whole godforsaken tower down, but all he wants is the sound of the zip at Chorus's fly and the feel of the length of his cock pressed tight to the crack of his arse. Chorus is smaller than him by at least six inches but if he moves his feet out wider, leans lower, lets his back arch, this still works. A copy of Chorus brings him the lube from a drawer in the desk in the corner and then disappears back into nothing. Slick fingers rub between his cheeks, rub the rim of his hole, make him hiss in a breath. He can hear how much Chorus wants this. He knows how much he wants it himself. 

The tip of Chorus's thick cock pushes up against him, blunt against his hole. Chorus shifts his hips, and Hercules doesn't care that there are copies gripping tightly at his wrists, copies squeezing at his balls, copies stroking his cock, and copies holding his cheeks apart, exposing him, so Chorus can press his cock inside him. He feels every inch of it, thick and long, making his nerves sing, making him bite his lip, making him push back, greedy, to take in more. He's been fucked by men before, over the years, the centuries, but he can almost feel what Chorus feels when he's inside him and that's new, and that's obscene, and he groans as Chorus starts to shift his hips. His fingertips dig into the wall, masonry crumbling, but neither of them cares. All Hercules cares about is the fingers rubbing firmly at his perineum, the hand around his balls, and the thick cock inside him. All he cares about is seeing stars behind his eyelids as his orgasm starts to build. 

Chorus fucks him steadily. He can hear Chorus's breath - he doesn't need to hear his thoughts to know when he gets closer to the end, because he feels his grip going tighter at his hips, he hears his breath turning harsh, feels the way his hips snap against him, tightly wound and losing control. He thrusts into the hand at his cock and that's it for him, he comes against the wall with a deep groan, his fingers raking furrows into the brickwork but he knows by the next time he's there, they'll be mended. Or maybe they won't and Chorus will leave them there so next time he can put his own fingers in them as Hercules's fingers tease against his rim, as he pushes up inside him. He can feel his thought in Chorus's head, the amusement at it, the hot flush of desire as he thinks about Hercules's cock in him, and there are flashes of it, against the wall, over the desk, in his bed in the penthouse flat overlooking the city. He's imagining Hercules's hands leaving bruises on his dark skin, imagining Hercules's cock as it penetrates him, when he bites back a groan and comes inside him with one last hard thrust. 

"We can do that next time, if you like," Hercules says, his forehead still resting down against the wall. Chorus's forehead goes down, too, to rest between Hercules's shoulder blades. He doesn't need to say a word for him to know the answer's yes. And when he pulls back, and pulls out, and Hercules turns to look at him, the copies are all gone again. They were always alone together, but now it feels like they are, too. 

Chorus hasn't actually, actively tried to kill him since before they saved the world. Now they're working together - they can do so much good with their powers combined like this - but who knows how long that will last. Hercules doesn't. He knows that Chorus doesn't, either. 

When they kiss, Chorus's hands in his hair, Hercules's hands on his bare skin, he hopes they'll have a while at least. But either way, it's one mistake he's glad for.


End file.
